This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, more particularly an electronic musical instrument provided with a preset system, which selectively controls a musical tone in accordance with either manually operated data or preset data, and comprises a manual setting device, such elements of the musical tone to be produced as the pitch, color and volume of the tone and an effect imparted thereto, and a preset memory device adapted to prestore such elements, whereby the output of either one of these two devices is read out by a simple switching operation to readily control the musical tone.
In a prior art preset system utilizing an electronic musical instrument of the type described above, when it is desirable to manually adjust the elements of a musical tone, a switch is operated to select the output of the manual setting device. When it is desired to adjust the elements according to a preset value, the switch is operated to select the output of the preset memory device. Such preset system wherein the switch can be operated at the time of commencing performance or during performance is disclosed, for example, in Hiyoshi et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,709 dated Aug. 5, 1975. With such preset system, it is possible to selectively take out either the output of the manual setting device or that of the preset memory device. Furthermore, it is also possible to add the output of the manual setting device to the output of the preset memory device which is now being performed thus combining the two outputs to manually modify the preset output.
With such preset system, however, while a musical tone is being generated and performed according to the preset data set in the preset memory device, it is often desirable to perform some elements of the musical tone at a value different from the value of the preset data.
Another preset system is disclosed, for example, in John W. Robinson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,992,969 dated Nov. 23, 1976. With this system, combination states of tone color control switches, which are manually operated to put them into either one of ON and OFF states, are stored in a plurality of memory sets. Each of memory sets comprises a plurality of memories and in addition, a plurality of piston switches are provided in correspondence with each of the memory sets. When one of the piston switches is actuated, the corresponding memory set is selected to control the tone color of the musical tone to be produced.